My Bloody Valentine
This Is Your Bloody Valentine

Let's admit it: the title of this mini LP is one of the most beautiful ever heard: "This is your bloody valentine." Wow. It has something gruesome, fascinating, and romantic all at once.

This is, in some aspects, the music that My Bloody Valentine would later produce with masterpieces like "Isn't anything" and "Loveless"; it's this and much more. The band here is practically unrecognizable: we have Kevin Shields on guitar, not yet saturated with glider, magic, and endless noise; drummer Colm O'Ciosoig, only partially showing his enormous potential; a mysterious keyboardist named Tina, whose last name is unknown; but it is known that she invented the band's name, and on vocals, Dave Conway (who would also remain in "Geek", "New record by").

We are in Berlin, it's '84, and My Bloody Valentine is one of the many dark sphere bands performing at London's Batcave; after recording this raw, unripe, but intriguing album, it was clear they really had something to say. The album opens with "Forever and again", a dark, oppressive piece with a measured pace, at times reminiscent of the Doors (also for the choice of using keys instead of bass), and at times a sick rockabilly à la Cramps. The second piece explodes with "Homelovin'guy", a dark garage-psych, with saturated sounds and Conway's voice, baritone, aggressive, between Nick Cave and Lux Interior. It's in "Don't Cramp my Style" that the future My Bloody Valentine emerge, in this beautiful, wild stomp with a prominent tribal drum and wild screams, and, unlike what it will become, absolutely no pop trace. Not even by accident. Terribly sexy "Tiger in my tank", a adrenaline rock n' roll, completely lo-fi and flammable.

Another noteworthy song is "Inferno", a damned gospel that resurrects the slower and sulfurous pieces of the Doors. Of course, if I didn't know what My Bloody Valentine would manage to accomplish later, if I didn't know how far Shields & co (assisted by the sweet yet unsettling voice of Bilinda Butcher) could push their intuitions on music, noise, ecstasy, love, and ultraviolence, I would find this album fabulous. Because the atmosphere it creates follows you through all the tracks, which, mind you, are real songs and not just sketches. Because you can sense that there is something under the song; under their rock n' roll there's a thin stream of poison, not caused by feedback as in Jesus & Mary Chain, it's something more subtle and disquieting.

Something that, over the years, will become blinding.